Word: baucus
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...Baucus announced last week a schedule to have his side of the bill marked up by the end of June. Starting in late April, the Finance Committee will hold a series of public roundtables followed by closed-door, member-to-member sessions on the delivery system - public or private, or some combination of the two - in which individual members can weigh in with their own plans and ideas. Other issues of coverage, including cost containment, prevention and wellness, will see similar treatment, aides say. The HELP Committee will have its own schedule on the prevention and wellness provisions as well...
...Last June's health-care summit helped spark the closed-door gatherings, which at first involved just six members: Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and the committee's top Republican, Charles Grassley of Iowa; Ted Kennedy and the HELP Committee's top Republican, Mike Enzi of Wyoming; and Senators Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and Orrin Hatch of Utah, the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Finance Committee's Subcommittee on Health Care. In recent months Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a top HELP Committee Democrat, was added as Kennedy's understudy as the Massachusetts Democrat...
...proposal apparently not on his table is the dream of many liberals - a government-run system known as single-payer. The health-care plan that Baucus presented last year would give individuals aged 55 to 64 the opportunity to buy into Medicare, but he dismissed the idea that this could open the door to a single-payer system. "America is not ready for single pay," he said. "We are a bit different from people in other countries. We're not Europe. We're not Canada. We're America ... I think we need to come up with a uniquely American solution...
Among his own priorities, Baucus added, a key one is "delivery reform" - changing the system so that medical providers are paid according to the quality of health care they deliver, not the quantity. "That's the biggest opportunity," he said. "It's going to be the driver" of reform. (Read "Obama Moves Health Care to the Front Burner...
...Baucus is also putting effort into building a working relationship with Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on Finance. The two have had weekly lunches for years, he said, "almost to the point where, if you were a fly on the wall, you'd think it was one office." Although the lack of Republican support for the stimulus bill was widely seen as a bad omen for bipartisanship in the bigger endeavors ahead, Baucus said that Grassley has assured him that Republicans are anxious to work with Democrats on health-care reform. "The real effort is to keep this...